The Swiss encrypted email service developed by CERN researchers, ProtonMail, announced a few hours ago the launch of an application that allows end-to-end encryption in clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail. Its name is ProtonMail Bridge and It is available for Windows and Mac; Linux users will have to wait at the beginning of next year.

It was in March 2016 when the mail that is said impregnable opened to all. It was created in 2013 and had been operating on a limited basis since 2014. The service based in Switzerland, regardless of legislation such as the European or the US, aimed to satisfy the most security and privacy aware after complaints about massive surveillance made by Edward Snowden Disadvantages? To enjoy its presumable high security and privacy from a desktop computer you have to make use of its web version by renouncing, therefore, mail clients . Until now.

Without changing clients or workflows

ProtonMail Bridge is literally a bridge between unencrypted and encrypted worlds in the sense that it allows an average user to benefit from the added security and privacy of end-to-end encryption without having to make any change in their email usage behavior.

Dr. Andy Yen, co-founder of the project, also believes that in this way the encryption of electronic mail not only approaches the most advanced users or technology experts. Because it is enough to install the application on the computer, add the ProtonMail account and make some small configurations to continue using the usual client, as the user has always done, with the additional protection of the PGP standard on which the service is based.

Bridge works like a mail server in the own team that communicates with the remote server of ProtonMail to encrypt and decrypt locally the incoming as well as the outgoing messages, also managing the keys in a transparent way for the user, assure its responsible.

A method developed over the last two years in order that mail clients can be compatible with this protection without being directly intervened by extensions, supplements or severe modifications. This also allows native text searches to work normally with encrypted messages without compromising them in any way.

Although ProtonMail Bridge officially supports Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird and Apple Mail , developers point out that it can work with any IMAP / SMTP email client. To use it, it will be necessary to have an account with a payment plan.